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Merged So Ebola's back......

catsmate

No longer the 1
catsmate
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Apr 9, 2007
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Eighty dead so far and it's spread from Guinea to Liberia. Though not to Canada.
Lovely little virus group, causes hemorrhagic fever and, usually, death.

Guinea's President Alpha Conde warned on Sunday of a "health emergency" as authorities raced to contain a spiralling Ebola epidemic which has killed 78 people and prompted neighbouring Senegal to close its border.
Guinea's health ministry said that 122 "suspicious cases" of viral haemorrhagic fever, including 78 deaths, had been registered.
President Conde said his country was facing a "health emergency" but that "thanks to the international community, all measures have been taken to effectively fight this epidemic."
Latest information on the outbreak "allows us to be optimistic and confident about achieving a final and rapid success in our response to this problem," he said on public television, urging people not to panic.
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Strangely little interest from the CT nuts on this one though.

BBC.
IAfrica.
 
It never goes away.

It is only when it threatens people other than the poorest and least able to cope that it ever becomes news.
 
True. The possibility of a case in Canada certainly stirred things up.
 
MikeG said:
It never goes away.

It is only when it threatens people other than the poorest and least able to cope that it ever becomes news.
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According to wiki, there is ongoing work on developing a vaccine:
Vaccines have protected nonhuman primates. The six months needed for immunization impede counter-epidemic uses. In 2003, a vaccine using an adenoviral (ADV) vector carrying the Ebola spike protein therefore was tested on crab-eating macaques. The monkeys twenty-eight days later were challenged with the virus and remained resistant.[62] A vaccine based on attenuated recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) vector carrying either the Ebola glycoprotein or the Marburg glycoprotein in 2005 protected nonhuman primates,[63] opening clinical trials in humans.
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The latest on the ebola outbreak in western Africa. Death toll rising.

An outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has been linked to the deaths of more than 120 people, according to the latest World Health Organization count.
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http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/health...s-mali-tests-negative-1.1776327#ixzz2yxmv3wlR

What is paramount is containment. The vector appears to have been pinned-down to bats, which (for example) bite fruit that people either later eat or that people unintentionally eat after their droppings have contaminated food sources.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/

This is a massive human intervention effort in a difficult part of the world. Personally, I commend Medicines Sans Frontieres and the WHO for their efforts there. I can't even imagine volunteering for such a mission. We live under the false illusion that it is an insular world. All that has to happen is one infected person slips through the cracks and climbs onto the wrong plane. Or, if somehow the virus adapts to be transmissable through an airborne route. Scary stuff.

~Dr. Imago
 
I am bettng one of the US Army's Medical Units in on it's way to Africa as I write this. Ebola is so damn dangerous that we cannot afford to let it get out of control anywhere on earth,and the US Govrenment has a long standing policy of offering aid to any country where Ebola or similiar disease break out.
 
Very nasty. The poor terrorist's suicide neutron bomb. Leaves the buildings standing.
 
dudalb said:
I am bettng one of the US Army's Medical Units in on it's way to Africa as I write this. Ebola is so damn dangerous that we cannot afford to let it get out of control anywhere on earth,and the US Govrenment has a long standing policy of offering aid to any country where Ebola or similiar disease break out.
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WHO already have a mobile control center in situ. They can run the tests and confirm a victim a few hours in the field. I am sure the US offer is on the table, but like so many good things the US do, will be ignored by the media :(
 
Soapy Sam said:
Very nasty. The poor terrorist's suicide neutron bomb. Leaves the buildings standing.
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Didn't the Soviets make a bio-weapon out of it?
I remember seeing a documentary about it long ago.

Dude in the lab got infected and offered himself up as guinea pig, so his colleagues could monitor the progress of the disease.

He did not go in a nice way.
 
You just made me enter a search string into google that probably comes up on a watch list somewhere.

Interesting reading though.
 
Eddie Dane said:
Didn't the Soviets make a bio-weapon out of it?
I remember seeing a documentary about it long ago.
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No as far as is known. They did experiment with Ebola strains, as did the UK, USA and others, but it's not really suited to weaponisation.

Eddie Dane said:
Dude in the lab got infected and offered himself up as guinea pig, so his colleagues could monitor the progress of the disease.

He did not go in a nice way.
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That was at Porton Down in the UK, his name was Geoffrey Platt and he survived. Ebola Zaire isn't invariably fatal. The Soviet reseachers infected were Nadezhda Makovetskaya (she concealed her infection and wasn't treated, she died) and Antonina Presnyakova (who was treated, but also died).
 
nvidiot said:
You just made me enter a search string into google that probably comes up on a watch list somewhere.

Interesting reading though.
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catsmate1 said:
No as far as is known. They did experiment with Ebola strains, as did the UK, USA and others, but it's not really suited to weaponisation.


That was at Porton Down in the UK, his name was Geoffrey Platt and he survived. Ebola Zaire isn't invariably fatal. The Soviet reseachers infected were Nadezhda Makovetskaya (she concealed her infection and wasn't treated, she died) and Antonina Presnyakova (who was treated, but also died).
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IIRC, Biopreparat was interested in weaponizing it just before Alibekov's defection but he didn't know the status afterward.
 
Am I the only one who now has the tune, "Hey now, hey now, ebola's back!" stuck in my head?
 
Eddie Dane said:
Didn't the Soviets make a bio-weapon out of it?
I remember seeing a documentary about it long ago.

Dude in the lab got infected and offered himself up as guinea pig, so his colleagues could monitor the progress of the disease.

He did not go in a nice way.
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Wasn't that the premise behind Stephen King's The Stand?
 
catsmate1 said:
That was at Porton Down in the UK, his name was Geoffrey Platt and he survived.
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Hmmm... would be interesting to see if he's been conferred immunity from the exposure. Of course, I doubt he'd put himself in the short line to volunteer for reinfection.

~Dr. Imago
 
Dr. Imago said:
Hmmm... would be interesting to see if he's been conferred immunity from the exposure. Of course, I doubt he'd put himself in the short line to volunteer for reinfection.

~Dr. Imago
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I don't know, though IIRC they used serum from an African Ebola survivor in his treatment, along with Interferon and other stuff.
Interesting thing, he was asymptomatic for six days and wandering around London before he got sick and sought medical attention. Imagine if the strain had been infectious during that period..........
 
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